the narratives through which we see the world, our communities, and
ourselves. We care as well because debates contribute to change the
world. As we name and rename our environment, we shape our cul-
tures and our social relations. In recent years, these discursive pro-
cesses have been key preoccupations for constructivists, a group of
scholars who call attention to the importance of ideas and language
in politics. To further advance the constructivist project, however,
analysts must better take into account the content and structure of
social debates, as well as the dialectical nature of political interactions.
This implies keeping in mind that disagreements are part of the human
condition. In political life, no disagreement is as profound as the left–
right opposition. It is to this quintessential political debate that we can
now turn.
Left and right in global politics
The right begins for us much further left than you think. (E ́douard Vaillant,
socialist member of the National Assembly, Paris, 1907).^5
From the beginning of the modern era, the public sphere in which
social and political debates take place has had supranational dimen-
sions. The ideas of the Enlightenment, for instance, circulated across
borders, in both Europe and America. Yet, as the philosopher Charles
Taylor explains, it is only recently that the public sphere “has been
imaginatively expanded to include all the (properly behaved) members
of the global community.”^6 In this sense, political debates are increas-
ingly global. Of course, the world public sphere does not encompass
all possible debates, many issues being mostly of concern for politics
on a smaller scale. Its existence, however, provides every debate with
a global connection. More specifically, the world public sphere creates
a shared background and vocabulary, which helps to bridge local,
national, continental, and global deliberations.
Current analyses of world politics note this public sphere, but they
are rarely attentive to the structure of global deliberations. If anything,
(^5) Marcel Gauchet, “La droite et la gauche,” quoted in Pierre Nora (ed.),Les lieux
de me ́moire. III. Les France: 1. Conflits et partages, Paris, Gallimard, 1992,
6 p. 417 (our translation).
Charles Taylor,Modern Social Imaginaries, Durham, Duke University Press,
2004, p. 179.
8 Left and Right in Global Politics